A thought on invasions

from GalCiv2 Forums
If you use a special invasion tactic, like mass drivers, and your invasion fails the target planet takes no damage from the mass drivers. I'd guess it's like this so that you can't just make a cheap transport with 1 million troops on it and smash up all the enemy planets you can't take normally.

However it means even the most massive of failed invasion pretty cheap for the defender, assuming you have better soldiering tech than your opponent and perhaps with the aid of +defence buildings it's not too vital to guard your planets against invasion. Sure you lose some pop, but half the time I'm struggling to get rid of excess pop to improve moral anyway.

I don't know if it'd be worth the effort to impliment; but what if the effect of special invasion tactics in failed invasion was based on the percentage of losses taken by both sides? That is, if you invade a 20 billion pop planet with 1 billion troops and mass drivers just to cause some damage it'd be pretty minimal. Say the attacker loses all his troops and the defender losses half a billion, that's 1.5b out of 21b = ~7% total loss so only 7% of the damage a successful mass driver invasion would be applied. PQ dmg should be rounded down to avoid low scale attrition damage since it can't be repaired. On the other hand, if it's a closely lost invasion you might see 75% of the total troops in the battle killed so 75% of the damage is applied to the planet, so the defender will lose some building and maybe some PQ: a massive battle raging accross the planet will tend to cause some breakage.

This should also provide more incentive to use the special invasion tactics, even if you lose you should cause some damage to the planet. What do you think?
11,393 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
than indeed i would make 100 small transport ships, invade all his planets with the best weapon i have, he would lose like 50% of all his space due to my weapons and i would have lost not to much, but he would be maimed.

now you can exploit this to first send in 1B troops and do your best weapons, you kill like 10B of his, and your second transport with more troops and a less effective but also less damaging weapon will take over the planet.

i like my option 2 better, the way it is.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This should also provide more incentive to use the special invasion tactics, even if you lose you should cause some damage to the planet. What do you think?

Actually, this would cause me to use special invasion tactics less than I do now. I always go for military conquest so sooner or later the planet will be mine. I'd prefer to damage it as little as possible, since I'll only have to spend resources building it back up.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
than indeed i would make 100 small transport ships, invade all his planets with the best weapon i have, he would lose like 50% of all his space due to my weapons and i would have lost not to much, but he would be maimed.

now you can exploit this to first send in 1B troops and do your best weapons, you kill like 10B of his, and your second transport with more troops and a less effective but also less damaging weapon will take over the planet.


If you can afford to throw away that many ships and can beat his troops when outnumbered 10 to 1 why bothing doing that? You could either just take his planets normally or with minisoldiers and not worry about damage in that case, or you're so much more powerful you can win without invading him at all.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually, this would cause me to use special invasion tactics less than I do now. I always go for military conquest so sooner or later the planet will be mine. I'd prefer to damage it as little as possible, since I'll only have to spend resources building it back up


How so? If you use a special tactic and win then there's no change anyway. If you use a special tacic and lose then at least you do some damage, and unless you knew you were going to lose when you attacked you'd must have been willing to damage the planet to use a special tactic in the first place.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
HOnestly- there needs to be a better system. Unsure what would work though
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't see anything wrong with the current system.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How so? If you use a special tactic and win then there's no change anyway. If you use a special tacic and lose then at least you do some damage, and unless you knew you were going to lose when you attacked you'd must have been willing to damage the planet to use a special tactic in the first place.

Yes. You can make the first attack knowing and wanting to lose using a damaging invasion tactic to reduce the defense to a more managable level and then invade and conquer using a less damaging attack. I actually seldom use this tactic, but some do and it's less wasteful of your troops. Personally, I use mini-soldiers virtually 100% of the time because it only damages a few building, not the planets PQ, and it tends to be a reasonably efficient use of your troops. The size game that you play on may very well affect your choice. On smaller galaxies it may not matter as much but when I'm trying to conquer 100 planets it's awkward when you run out of transports right near the end.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, if your goal is to damage the planet you can do so but only once you have enough troops to actually take the planet.

I don't see anything wrong with the current system.

I agree. I just use way more words to say so.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


Right now it's just too easy to win with 1k troop transports using mini-soldiers. I would like to see a need for some of the other tactics. (info warfare is also good, but the rest suck)

For me I'd like to see the following just for the existing game :
1) An AI getting smeared should go research a soldiering tech or two to slow me down.
2) AIs should be using at least one farm, and trying to keep morale around 70. (rarely see the AI do this correctly)

As for improvements, I'd love to see additional tecs that give additional modules that you could put on transports to give additional bonuses/effects --- granted that the defender gets an overall boost and maybe add defensive soldiering tecs.